Smoke in Mirrors

  Leonora looked around at the unadorned walls and the impersonal furnishings. It was difficult to imagine Meredith, always so vivid and exciting, spending the last few days of her life in this plain, dull space.

  A great sadness welled up inside Leonora. Meredith had been complicated and frequently maddening. Whenever she had appeared, trouble had followed. But the world would certainly be a less colorful place without her.

  “There was no one else to do it,” Leonora said.

  Chapter Two

  Perpetual night infused the interior of Deke’s house. The curtains were drawn closed on all the windows even though the low, gray clouds of the cold November afternoon offered no real threat of sunlight. The gloom was relieved only by the eerie glow of the computer screen. It reflected off the lenses of Deke’s gold-rimmed glasses and bathed his face and untrimmed beard in an unhealthy light.

  Thomas sat in the leather armchair on the other side of the desk, a cup of coffee beside him, Wrench sprawled at his feet, and felt depressed. Whatever progress he had made in the struggle to drag Deke out of the netherworld inside his computer had been lost when the news of Meredith Spooner’s death had reached them. Deke had immediately plunged back through the looking glass, searching for connections and patterns to support his theory that Bethany had been murdered.

  “Leonora Hutton showed up at the apartment?” Deke asked. His eagerness was so painfully obvious that it hurt to look at him. “Just like you thought she would?”

  “She showed. Said she’d come to pack up Meredith’s things.”

  “Well? What happened? Will she help us?”

  “I don’t know,” Thomas said.

  “What do you mean? You told me that she was our only real lead.”

  “I know.” He hesitated. “But she’s not quite what I expected.”

  “How’s that?”

  Thomas thought about his impressions of Leonora. He was still trying to sort them out. He’d spent most of the time on the trip back to Wing Cove yesterday and a lot of last night on the task, but he hadn’t made much headway. No matter how he approached the problem she refused to be stuffed into a neat category.

  “She’s nothing like Meredith,” he said. “Complete opposites, in fact. Reverse images. Day and night.”

  If Meredith, with a voice that hinted of honey and Texas, golden blond hair and eyes the color of a summer sky, had been the day, Leonora was the night.

  “Good twin, bad twin?” Deke suggested.

  “Trust me, those two were never twins.”

  A memory of that first glimpse of Leonora yesterday when she had turned away from the dresser to confront him hovered in his head. The image haunted him like the remnants of a dream he could not shake.

  He saw her again now in his mind and tried to employ a measure of objectivity. She had been dressed in a pair of dark green trousers and a green pullover. Her dark hair had been caught up in a French twist. Stylish, black-rimmed glasses emphasized her green eyes and the striking planes and angles of an intelligent face that had fascinated him for some inexplicable reason. So much so that he had had to make an effort to look away, even for a few seconds. She had worn little if any detectable makeup. Not a woman who traded on her looks the way Meredith had, he thought.

  Within five seconds of meeting her he had known that Leonora was a lot like him in one respect. She was accustomed to going after what she wanted. Probably didn’t give up easily, either, once she had set herself a goal.

  “What did she say about the finder’s fee?” Deke asked.

  “Called it a bribe. Then I sort of implied that if the police got involved they might look in her direction to find the money, what with her being such a good friend of Meredith’s and all.”

  Deke was startled. “How did that go over?”

  “I don’t think she liked being threatened.”

  “No big surprise there, I guess.” Deke gazed into the oracle that was his glowing computer screen. “I’ve been thinking about the money.”

  “What about it?”

  “In a way, it’s the least of our problems.”

  “Got news for you, Deke, when the audit turns up more than a million missing from the fund we’re going to have a big problem.”

  “I’ll replace the money before the audit. No one will ever know it disappeared.”

  “Replace it? Just where do you plan to get that kind of cash?”

  “I’ll liquidate some accounts.”

  “The hell you will,” Thomas said softly. “I’m your investment manager, remember? Damned if I’ll let you take that kind of a bath.”

  “I can replace it. Take a few consulting assignments.”

  “Forget it. Meredith Spooner stole that money. We’re going to get it back.”

  Deke smiled slightly.

  “What?” Thomas said.

  “Nothing. Just that when it comes to finding that missing money you’re starting to sound as obsessed as I am about figuring out who murdered Bethany.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing, damn it.”

  “Yeah,” Deke said. “Gotta love those principle things.”

  Thomas slumped deeper into the chair. “We’re getting a reputation around here, you know. They’re calling us the ‘crazy Walker brothers.’ ”

  “I heard.”

  They sat together in the gloom for a while. Wrench stretched, changed position slightly and went back to sleep.

  “We need to find the money,” Thomas said eventually, “because it’s our only shot at figuring out whether or not you’re right about Bethany and Meredith being murdered.”

  “What’s this? You mean you’re starting to buy into my conspiracy theory?”

  “Let’s just say that my conversation with Leonora raised some questions I’d like to see answered.”

  “What questions?”

  “You know that stuff about the drugs?”

  Deke’s hand clenched fiercely around a pen. “What about it? Bethany didn’t do drugs.”

  Thomas reached down to scratch Wrench’s ears. “Leonora Hutton swears Meredith didn’t use them, either.”

  “No shit?” Deke put down the pen, sat back and combed his fingers through his untidy beard. “And yet the same rumors are circulating. Now that is interesting.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You knew Meredith pretty well there for a while,” Deke said. “What do you think about those drug rumors we heard?”

  Thomas hesitated. It was a little weird to realize that you could sleep with a woman a few times and not know something as fundamental as whether or not she used illicit chemicals. All he could truthfully say was that she hadn’t used them when she was with him and he’d never seen any indication that she had been under the influence.

  “I can’t be sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say Meredith Spooner was too focused on her scams to risk messing herself up with drugs,” he said finally.

  “Just as Bethany was too focused on her work to fool around with them. It’s another link, admit it.”

  “Okay.” Thomas sighed. “We’ve got two links. Maybe. Both women spent a lot of time at Mirror House and both women are rumored to have used drugs even though there was no evidence they had done any at the time of death and everyone who knew them well claims they wouldn’t have used them at all.”

  There was a short silence.

  “Not much to go on, is it?” Deke asked wearily.

  “No.”

  “Maybe Leonora Hutton will turn out to be the key,” Deke said.

  Thomas did not respond. He wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted Leonora Hutton to be the key to this thing.

  The rain had stopped by the time Thomas and Wrench left Deke’s house but the damp chill bit deep. The clouds hung low and heavy, obscuring what little light was left in the short day. The fir trees dripped and the grass at the edge of the path was muddy. The surface of the bone-chilling water in the cove was agitated and choppy, as though some monstrous denizen of the deep was roaming ab
out down below in search of prey.

  Thomas snapped on Wrench’s leash and together they headed for the footpath that would take them home. Wrench didn’t need a leash, but people got nervous if they saw him without one. Thomas empathized. People sometimes got the wrong impression about him, too. Maybe that’s why he and Wrench had hit it off right from the start, he thought. They were both innocent victims of their genetic inheritances.

  The paved path followed the outline of the cove. At this time of day the traffic was fairly heavy. Joggers, runners and power walkers jockeyed for position. Those, including Wrench and himself, who moved at a more leisurely pace were expected to give way to others who took their fitness seriously.

  Several dogs bobbed at the ends of leashes. Wrench acknowledged a chocolate Lab and a retriever as equals and politely ignored a fluffy little white powder puff that wanted desperately to be best buddies.

  Wing Cove was tucked into a densely forested stretch of landscape that bordered Puget Sound. Under other circumstances, Thomas thought, he would have liked the place a lot better, in spite of the fact that it was heavily oriented toward the academic crowd. The cove itself was aptly named. It roughly resembled the shape of a gull’s wing in flight. The widest section was at the entrance where it connected with the Sound. The town was located at the far tip of the wing. A sprinkling of houses and cottages was scattered on the wooded hillsides that rose up from the water’s edge.

  Wrench led the way to the narrow footbridge that crossed the cove at midwing. The wooden bridge provided a shortcut to the opposite side. The route saved less enthusiastic exercisers from having to go through town or all the way to the cove’s entrance to use the highway bridge.

  When they ambled off the footbridge at the far side Thomas saw a white SUV bearing the blue-and-gold logo of the Wing Cove Police Department parked near the edge of the path.

  He recognized Ed Stovall, the chief of police, behind the wheel and raised a hand in casual greeting. Ed rolled down the window and nodded brusquely.

  “Evening,” Ed said. There was an edge to the greeting.

  He was a small, compact man with thinning hair and no discernible sense of humor. Ed always seemed a little too rigid as far as Thomas was concerned. He figured the guy for a frustrated military commando wanna-be or an ex-Marine.

  Then again, he and Deke were biased against Stovall. They had locked horns with him more than once during the months following Bethany’s death.

  Ed had handled the investigation. When he had called it a suicide and everyone else, including the medical examiner, had gone along, Deke had protested. Loudly. Stovall had not been real happy when Deke had insisted that there was an unidentified killer running around tiny Wing Cove.

  The college administration hadn’t been particularly thrilled with Deke’s conspiracy theory, either. Wing Cove was a company town and Eubanks College, the community’s largest employer, was the company that made the rules. The trustees and the alumni were a conservative bunch. In Thomas’s opinion, the college administration was obsessed with the reputation of the institution. But he had to admit that he could see their point on the subject of campus safety. A campus that acquired a reputation for violence made parents nervous. Nervous parents sent their offspring elsewhere for higher ed. Every tuition fee counted at a small institution like Eubanks.

  Although he understood where Stovall and the campus authorities were coming from, Thomas had had no choice but to back Deke’s request for a more thorough investigation of Bethany’s death. Push come to shove, the Walker brothers stood together even when one of them was privately convinced that the other had gone off the deep end.

  “Hello, Ed.” Thomas came to a halt beside the SUV’s front window. Wrench sniffed at a tire. “Keeping an eye out for speeding joggers?”

  Ed did not smile. Thomas had never seen him smile.

  “Had a few minutes,” Ed said in his serious Ed tone. “Got a cup of coffee. Came down here to drink it. Nice here this time of day.”

  Thomas realized Ed was not looking at him. He was watching the crowd on the footpath. Thomas followed his gaze. It appeared to be focused on a woman in pale sweats, walking briskly and determinedly at the edge of the path. She looked to be in her late thirties, attractive in a serious sort of way. There was something very focused about the way she moved. He got the feeling she was working off some heavy stress.

  He glanced back at Ed and recognized the expression. Any male would have understood it. Ed had it bad for the lady in the light-colored sweats. For a couple of seconds he even felt a twinge of sympathy. Then he reminded himself that this was Stovall, who thought Deke was crazy.

  “Friend of yours?” Thomas asked.

  “We’ve met a few times,” Ed said. Very offhand. “We both spend a lot of time at the Hidden Cove.”

  The Hidden Cove was one of the town’s two bookstores. Thomas was mildly surprised to discover that Ed read. Police procedural mysteries and high-tech military thrillers, no doubt.

  Thomas watched the woman. “Who is she?”

  “Elissa Kern. Professor Kern’s daughter.”

  “Didn’t know he had one.”

  “Elissa told me that her parents were divorced when she was five. She and her mother moved away. Didn’t see much of her dad for a long time. Elissa got divorced, herself, last year. Came back here to get to know her father.” Ed took a swallow of coffee and lowered the cup. “Don’t think it’s working out. Kern’s got a problem with the bottle. Only reason he hasn’t been fired is because he’s got tenure.”

  “I heard.”

  Everyone in town knew that Dr. Osmond J. Kern, distinguished professor of mathematics, was slowly drinking himself to death. Bethany had been a great admirer of Kern’s and had always spoken highly of him. The professor had made his name and reputation nearly thirty years ago with his work on an algorithm that had won prestigious prizes in mathematics and had proved enormously important to the computer industry. He hadn’t done anything else of note before or since as far as Thomas knew. But, then, Kern hadn’t needed to do much more than show up occasionally for classes and seminars. As Ed had just pointed out, Kern’s work on the algorithm had been his ticket to academic nirvana: tenure.

  Elissa Kern was almost directly in front of the SUV now. Ed watched her with a tight, stoic expression. She noticed the vehicle parked in the deepening shadows. Thomas thought her tense expression lightened a little. She did not pause but she raised her hand in greeting.

  Ed responded by lifting his own hand six whole inches.

  Seething passion, Ed Stovall style.

  But who was he to judge? Thomas thought. Not like he was getting any seething passion, himself, these days.

  “Hey, Ed, you hear those rumors about Meredith Spooner doing drugs?”

  Ed’s gaze followed Elissa as she moved off down the footpath. “I heard.”

  “Yesterday I met someone who knew her pretty well. She said that Meredith had a thing about drugs. Claimed she wouldn’t have used them. That strike you as familiar?”

  Ed sighed and pulled his attention away from Elissa’s disappearing backside. “We’ve been over this ground before, Walker.”

  “Just thought I’d mention it.”

  “Sounds like your brother is working on a new conspiracy theory. Tell him not to waste his time. The investigation into Bethany Walker’s death is closed and it will stay that way unless you’ve got some solid evidence to show me.”

  “Sure, Ed. Always good to know you’re keeping an open mind.”

  “Best thing you could do for your brother is get him to a shrink.” Ed switched on the SUV’s ignition. “Might not be a bad idea if you had a chat with one, yourself. You’re starting to sound like you’re buying into Deke’s fantasy.”

  Wrench chose that moment to lift his leg beside the front tire of the SUV.

  Fortunately, Ed did not notice the canine insult. He was too busy looking back over his shoulder to check for traffic behind the SUV. He put the vehic
le in gear and drove away down a narrow lane.

  Wrench came to stand quietly beside Thomas.

  “That was very passive-aggressive of you, Wrench.”

  Wrench grinned.

  “Okay, maybe I am getting as bad as Deke,” Thomas said. “But at least I’m not parking in the trees down here near the footpath to watch a woman do her daily exercise routine. A man’s gotta be desperate to do that.”

  Wrench looked up at him.

  “All right, so we hung around that apartment down in L.A. for a while waiting for Leonora Hutton to show up. Different matter entirely. That was business.”

  He and Wrench continued along the footpath at their own easy pace, ignoring the thundering herd. A short while later they turned off the path to follow a lane up the wooded hillside to the house in the trees.

  Thomas paused on the porch to dig out his key and open the door. Inside the small foyer he unleashed Wrench. He removed his jacket and hung it in the closet. Wrench went into the kitchen to find his water bowl.

  There was a chill in the house. Thomas paused in the front room to light the fire. When the blaze was crackling properly he rose and walked between the two large recliners positioned in front of the hearth to the counter that divided the kitchen and living areas.

  Virtually every surface gleamed in these rooms. Ditto the bathroom and front hall. It had taken him several months to complete the tile project. Sometimes he wondered if he’d gone a little overboard.

  He checked the phone for messages. There were none. Leonora Hutton had not called.

  He opened a cupboard, took a doggie treat out of a large bag and tossed it to Wrench. Wrench crunched happily away on the fake bone.

  “Supposed to be good for your teeth,” Thomas said.

  Wrench did not appear to be concerned about his teeth.

  It was hard to explain good oral hygiene to a dog that had been blessed with excellent teeth. Thomas abandoned the attempt, opened the door beside the refrigerator and went into his favorite room in the house, his workshop.